I'm an Assistant Professor of Economics at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, a Research Fellow with the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute, a Senior Fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee, and a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics. I'm on Twitter: @artcarden.

Let's Be Blunt: It's Time to End the Drug War

April 20 is the counter-culture “holiday” on which lots and lots of people come together to advocate marijuana legalization (or just get high). Should drugs—especially marijuana—be legal? The answer is “yes.” Immediately. Without hesitation. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 seized in a civil asset forfeiture. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. It’s high time to end prohibition. Even if you aren’t willing to go whole-hog and legalize all drugs, at the very least we should legalize marijuana.

For the sake of the argument, let’s go ahead and assume that everything you’ve heard about the dangers of drugs is completely true. That probably means that using drugs is a terrible idea. It doesn’t mean, however, that the drug war is a good idea.

Prohibition is a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended consequences. Literally: it’s an example in the textbook I use in my introductory economics classes (Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles of Economics if you’re curious) and in the most popular introductory economics textbook in the world (by N. Gregory Mankiw).The demand curve for drugs is extremely inelastic, meaning that people don’t change their drug consumption very much in response to changes in prices. Therefore, vigorous enforcement means higher prices and higher revenues for drug dealers. In fact, I’ll defer to Cowen and Tabarrok—page 60 of the first edition, if you’re still curious—for a discussion of the basic economic logic:

The more effective prohibition is at raising costs, the greater are drug industry revenues. So, more effective prohibition means that drug sellers have more money to buy guns, pay bribes, fund the dealers, and even research and develop new technologies in drug delivery (like crack cocaine). It’s hard to beat an enemy that gets stronger the more you strike against him or her.

People associate the drug trade with crime and violence; indeed, the newspapers occasionally feature stories about drug kingpins doing horrifying things to underlings and competitors. These aren’t caused by the drugs themselves but from the fact that they are illegal (which means the market is underground) and addictive (which means demanders aren’t very price sensitive).

Those same newspapers will also occasionally feature articles about how this or that major dealer has been taken down or about how this or that quantity of drugs was taken off the streets. Apparently we’re to take from this the idea that we’re going to “win” the war on drugs. Apparently. It’s alleged that this is only a step toward getting “Mister Big,” but even if the government gets “Mister Big,” it’s not going to matter. Apple didn’t disappear after Steve Jobs died. Getting “Mr. Big” won’t win the drug war. As I pointed out almost a year ago, economist and drug policy expert Jeffrey Miron estimates that we would have a lot less violence without a war on drugs.

At the recent Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, David Henderson from the Naval Postgraduate School pointed out the myriad ways in which government promises to make us safer in fact imperil our safety and security. The drug war is an obvious example: in the name of making us safer and protecting us from drugs, we are actually put in greater danger. Without meaning to, the drug warriors have turned American cities into war zones and eroded the very freedoms we hold dear.

Freedom of contract has been abridged in the name of keeping us “safe” from drugs. Private property is less secure because it can be seized if it is implicated in a drug crime (this also flushes the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty” out the window). The drug war has been used as a pretext for clamping down on immigration. Not surprisingly, the drug war has turned some of our neighborhoods into war zones. We are warehousing productive young people in prisons at an alarming rate all in the name of a war that cannot be won.

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By this definition, the drug war is insane. We are no safer, and we are certainly less free because of concerted efforts to wage war on drugs. It’s time to stop the insanity and end prohibition.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Yeah you’re right, you should never consider doing anything illegal…that would mean thinking for yourself instead of letting the government think for you. Its too much effort.

Your government is there to work for you pal, you pay their salaries. I don’t like being told what to do (when it doesn’t hurt others) by people that are on MY payroll.

Do you care for alcohol periodically? What if you lived during prohibition? Would you be a good little sheep and do what you’re told or would you think for yourself? Do you ever go a couple miles over the speed limit because you know it is safe?

You, sir, are very judgmental and, excuse me, but a “tool.” A sin is a sin. What unhealthy habits do YOU propagate, legal or not? Must men suffer so long for a mistake of their youth? Do a favor and smoke a joint. You’ll be quite surprised at how NO harm to you or anyone else will occur, and maybe you’ll start to actually question your government on things. It’s a novel idea – having a free mind that thinks independently of legal authority. I guess people like Jesus or Ghandi should have followed their leaders and never go against the grain too.

You, sir, are very judgmental and, excuse me, but a “tool.” A sin is a sin. What unhealthy habits do YOU propagate, legal or not? Must men suffer so long for a mistake of their youth? Do yourself a favor and smoke a joint. You’ll be quite surprised at how NO harm to you or anyone else will occur, and maybe you’ll start to actually question your government on things. It’s a novel idea – having a free mind that thinks independently of legal authority. I guess people like Jesus or Ghandi should have followed their leaders and never go against the grain too.

If you care so much about THE LAW. you need to read your damn constitution. Your entire comment was emotion based nonsense that is full of so many logical holes that only a brain dead heroin addict (HAHA) would think you’re not completely insane. The war on drugs makes things worse. THAT IS A FAILURE. While you are on your against the law kick… why not go see how many unjust and illegal laws there are. Any law that is abhorrent to the constitution is illegal. There is no mention of limiting a person’s use of drugs anywhere in the LAW OF THE LAND. You’re stupid guy.

On top of this the now legal weed can be purchased without prescription which means consumers now have a HUGE boost in consuming power due to a new low cost of medication for a multitude of ailments. Now jobs will be lost but new jobs will merge as that new purchasing power shifts to new industry growth (most likely more tech growth). Also a booming new marijuana industry.

You are a moron. Your long-winded remark did nothing to reply to the author’s thesis, which is that these laws (particularly regarding marijuana) do way more harm than good. Yet you cling to the parrot response of “Drugs are bad. All illegal drugs are the same and if you do drugs, you’re bad. The law is infallible and should never be questioned. The end.” Not everyone agrees with you nor should they be required. If the law was still that blacks and whites cannot marry or date, would you say that those who disobey this law are therefore morally repugnant because the law says so? It is effectively the same thing. You are rationalizing the legislation of morality and personal choice. Think for yourself, if you can.

Circular logic. Back up a little there, buddy. The Law is the thing that is screwed up. People who make millions determining what you can or can’t be allowed to put into your body with their permission. And last time I checked this is a free country. Sounds like you are bought and sold by the institution that imprisons people for the smallest of ‘crimes’. Like they say, until it happens to you…

I agree that people make choices and should live with them. I also have little sympathy or care for addicts and users. But I have three problems that override that position. The first is that I am paying through the nose for the incarceration of minor offenders. I don’t care if a guy wants to get high in his house all day, every day. As long as I’m not supporting him he can be stoned all he wants. The fact that police officers, prosecutors, legislators, jailors and everyone else is spending so much time and money on this really minor issue is ridiculous. The second is that these offenders go to jail as relatively harmless stoners and come back hardened violent criminals, who then proceed to damage the community more. It’s actually making the situation worse. The third problem I have is understanding why marijuana is illegal in the first place. Alcohol, tobacco, and even prescription drugs all seem to have broader and deeper negative impacts on society, but they’re legal. So why marijuana? Why spend all this time and money on this specific drug when really there are bigger fish to fry?

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong. History is ending because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley, and as the inevitable chaostrophie approaches, people look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble it casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever knew. And the last sane moment we ever knew was on the plains of Africa 15,000 years ago rocked in the cradle of the Great Horned Mushroom Goddess before history, before standing armies, before slavery and property, before warfare and phonetic alphabets and monotheism, before, before, before. And this is where the future is taking us because the secret faith of the twentieth century is not modernism, the secret faith of the twentieth century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the paleolithic, and that gives us body piercing, abstract expressionism, surrealism, jazz, rock-n-roll and catastrophe theory. The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom dotted plains of Africa where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are. And why does this matter? It matters because it shows that the way out is back and that the future is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under the board in eternity. And I tell you this because if the community understands what it is that holds it together the community will be better able to streamline itself for flight into hyperspace because what we need is a new myth, what we need is a new true story that tells us where we’re going in the universe and that true story is that the ego is a product of pathology, and when psilocybin is regularly part of the human experience the ego is supressed and the supression of the ego means the defeat of the dominators, the materialists, the product peddlers. Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of the feeling of immediate experience – and nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience, but that’s what holds the community together. And as we break out of the silly myths of science, and the infantile obsessions of the marketplace what we discover through the psychedelic experience is that in the body, IN THE BODY, there are Niagras of beauty, alien beauty, alien dimensions that are part of the self, the richest part of life. I think of going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience like going to the grave without ever having sex. It means that you never figured out what it is all about. The mystery is in the body and the way the body works itself into nature. What the Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy, orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony! And if you get them on the run you have the dominators sweating folks, because that means your getting it all reconnected, and getting it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness and self-definition through thing-fetish. Getting it all connected means tapping into the Gaian mind, and the Gaian mind is what we’re calling the psychedelic experience. Its an experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet. And without that experience we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience the compass of the self can be set, and that’s the idea; figuring out how to reset the compass of the self through community, through ecstatic dance, through psychedelics, sexuality, intelligence, INTELLIGENCE. This is what we have to have to make the forward escape into hyperspace.